For The Tribune

BROWNSTOWN

Brownstown Central’s girls basketball team displayed a balanced offensive attack in Saturday’s Mid-Southern Conference game and rolled to a 56-39 Mid-Southern Conference win against Silver Creek.

The Braves made a season-high nine 3-point baskets on their way to shooting 21 for 57 from the floor.

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]

After the Dragons led 4-0, the Braves scored seven straight points, the last four on baskets by Grace Jaynes to take the lead for good at 7-6.

Brooklyn Snodgrass followed with back-to-back 3-pointers that helped the team to a 17-11 lead at the end of the quarter.

Morgan Wehmiller made two 3-pointers and a layup, and Sophie Kreis added another 3 in the second quarter to spark the Braves to a 31-19 lead at the half.

The Braves didn’t give the Dragons a chance to get back into the game, as they began the second half on a 7-0 run. Jaynes’ layup made it 38-19 at the 5:50 mark of the third quarter.

Wehmiller added two more 3s, Payton Farmer scored three baskets inside and Kreis made another 3, helping the Braves outscore the Dragons 19-7 and lead 50-26 going into the final quarter.

Braves coach Karla Rieckers said she was pleased to see Farmer make some strong moves to the basket.

“Payton had turned her ankle, so she wasn’t really up to herself today,” Rieckers said. “Grace has battled in and out of the lineup. I was kind of hard on her there for a couple games, but I’m glad to see she is responding because I told her we need her to score.

“Once I took her out of the lineup, she went away from even looking to score. That wasn’t the purpose. I was more upset that she wasn’t blocking out and rebounding. She’s our tallest player on the team, and she has to do those things for us. She’s got to score for us, too. I was glad to see against Austin she kind of came out of that a little bit; against Clarksville she did a little bit better; and she did a really nice job today for us.”

Wehmiller topped the Braves (7-6, 3-4 MSC) with 16 points, Jaynes scored 12 and Farmer and Snodgrass each had nine. Madison Klinge topped the Braves in rebounds with seven.

“Morgan has been in a little bit of a slump, too, with her scoring, and it’s nice to see her get back, and she was wanting the ball and was calling for the ball,” Rieckers said. “Brooklyn made 3s, and Sophie made a couple. When your shots are falling, it makes for a lot better game.”

Lauren Polston was high for the Dragons (4-10, 3-3 MSC) with 13 points.

Brownstown will take a two-game winning streak into the Toby Yoho Classic on Dec. 28 and 29 at Eastern Greene.

“That’s what we talked about,” Rieckers said. “We’ve got a week of practice, and I said, ‘Going in a week of practice with a win versus a loss would be a whole lot better week of practice.’

“We’ve been focusing on correcting some of the mistakes we made. We’re so young, sometimes, we don’t play quite as hard as we should, and we don’t get the blockouts that we should. We’ve really been working a lot on those things in practice. It was nice to see them come out today and put that into play and attack their zone, which has been a problem for us. But I thought we did a really nice job of that today.”

On the first day of the holiday tournament, Brownstown will face Clay City and Edgewood.

“They both have winning records and play some pretty good competition,” Rieckers said. “It will be good for us to get four games in two days to see where our stamina is, and with a young team, you never know.”